Claire Foy on Playing Queen Elizabeth: "She's Really Just Trying to Figure Out What the Hell Is Going On."

The Dalai Lama supposedly once said that "sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent." He may not have been talking about Claire Foy, but he could have been. Beginning November 4 and already renewed for a second season with a rumored four more to come, Netflix's 10-episode drama The Crown goes behind the Buckingham Palace gates to recount the six-decade (and counting) reign of Queen Elizabeth II, as inhabited by Foy. And while the series is sweeping in scope and lush in production—all told, it's speculated to have a $150 million budget, the largest of any previous Netflix show—The Crown's true piquancy radiates from the quiet vigor of its 32-year-old lead.

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"Elizabeth is a watcher and a thinker more than a doer," says Foy, a born-and-bred Brit who exhibited equally fervent restraint in her devastating portrayal of Anne Boleyn in last year's PBS Masterpiece show Wolf Hall, which culminated in Boleyn's execution—a scene director Peter Kosminsky has said he was "most proud of in 35 years of filmmaking."

As Elizabeth, Foy, a graduate of the Oxford School of Drama, navigates not only the complexities that come with monarchical rule—especially as a woman—but also the nurturing, if at times complicated, decades-long marriage between the queen and her husband, Prince Philip (Matt Smith). "Elizabeth is a very good daughter, a very good wife, and a very good English countrywoman," Foy says. "That she's given this responsibility—she is the most unlikely person." And thus, as Foy sees it, far more engaging: "She's really just someone trying to figure out what the hell is going on."